Fendi kept it in the famiglia today by revealing Nico Vascellari—partner of Delfina Delettrez and de facto son-in-law of Silvia Venturini—as its artist-in-residence for Spring 2019. Delfina was backstage looking witchily mysterious (the word FENDI stamped on her neck and a new season double-F skort above her knee-high crocodile cowboy boots), and as her mother explained: “Nico has a personality that fascinates me, and fascinates Delfina of course! Because he has this dark side yet is also so calm, sweet, and tender. So I was thinking about him both as a man and in his work; he transforms himself on stage.”

Vascellari’s performance art was not part of today’s show, but his transformation via anagram of Fendi to Fiend and Roma to Amor, his illustration as Karl Lagerfeld (another side of Fendi) as the Jokarl, and his imagined alchemical symbols all provided decorative oomph. There was also a one-season-only, Vascellari-authored rework of the double-F monogram that will exert some serious magic on Fendi-heads.

The models emerged from the crypt-like gloom of a vaulted arch decorated with Vascellari’s illustrations of a claw-legged frog (a bit Santa Cruz screaming hand) and a grafted-together Janus-snake and candle. There was a great deal of light and dark, whether via meshed dark suiting or line-inlaid leather blousons and bombers that revealed the lightness of the pieces worn beneath, or the flocked shearling fronted pulls that had the appearance of weight but the hand feel of—shazam!—nothing at all. The silhouettes were consistent with current-iteration Fendi: a terrace-casual dream catalog of bucket hats and fanny packs and Cuban shirts and tracksuits and sports sandals (sometimes fetchingly matched with toe socks that spelled out FENDI on each digit). I was especially taken by the checked paper-light suits and bombers that combined both crunchiness and airiness, and which looked ace too. Mixing the alchemical with the ephemeral is a proven fashion formula for conjuring commercial magic right now, but via Vascellari this Fendi-fied flirtation with the dark side proved compellingly wantable.